Chapter 13 #3
Carter nearly dropped his towel laughing.
Marcus kept going. “There will not be another Vanessa situation.”
That killed the laughter immediately.
Vanessa.
None of us liked revisiting that name.
Darius sighed. “Come on now, Stacey is nowhere near that kind of evil.”
"I'm not coming for you. I'm addressing the situation," Marcus said, crossing his arms. "I observed Vanessa's experience firsthand—the back-and-forth, the nearly six months of hesitation and wavering as she built something in her mind that she shouldn't have."
Darius looked down and then rubbed his chin like he did when he was overthinking.
“I like Stacey,” he finally admitted. "She’s calm, soft-spoken, and respectful.” He paused briefly, as if trying to clarify something obvious to those who are intellectually deficient. “She listens.”
Carter’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you down bad.”
“I am not down bad.”
Marcus started laughing.
Darius deliberately ignored both of them. “I care about her. I enjoy spending time with her. She is…” He paused to find the right word. “Peaceful.”
“That’s because she hasn’t challenged you yet,” Carter said.
“She doesn’t challenge me because she is naturally submissive. I need my mate to know how to step back and let me handle things.”
Marcus snorted hard enough to almost miss the rack.
Darius looked immediately offended. “I don’t understand what’s funny.”
"And what if she doesn’t?" Marcus said. "What if she comes in like Sage did, with forty-five minutes of stubbornness in every room and an opinion about everything?"
"Sage is a Luna," Darius said. "That is a specific circumstance."
"What if she comes in like Destiny?" I said.
Darius looked at me, and his whole expression changed.
"No can do, Lil Bossy is…," he said carefully. "She is my sister. She is exactly what you need, and I respect how she is built." He paused. "I do not want that in my house."
Carter completely broke down, collapsing forward and hunched over the bar, with his hand on his knee, trembling.
Darius observed him with a look that suggested he believed he was being entirely honest and simply didn't see the humor in it.
"Darius," Marcus said, pressing his lips together.
"What?" Darius shrugged. "I love my sisters. They're exactly where they're supposed to be." He looked between Marcus and me. A corner of his mouth twitched. "I'll pass."
"Brother," Carter said, "With love—a profound love. You can't negotiate with fate. You, of all people, understand this. You handle threat assessments and have seen what happens when people try to bargain with what is already settled."
"I am simply expressing a preference."
"Fate doesn't care about your preferences. Fate looked at Marcus Monroe, the most dominant Alpha we all know, and said — Here is the most stubborn, strong-willed, complex woman on the compound. Then it put them together."
“Hard facts,” Marcus said, shaking his head.
"Fate looked at Ty," Carter continued, turning to me, "and said — here is the most patient man alive.
Give him the woman who needs the most patience.
Perfect. And fate is going to look at you — the man who wants quiet, soft, easy — and you're gonna wake up bonded to somebody who throws knives at your head for foreplay.”
The silence lasted one second before all three of us started laughing.
Darius looked genuinely disturbed. “Why would you say that to me?”
“Because the universe enjoys comedy.”
Darius pointed at Marcus. "Your mate volunteered to handle Vanessa before anybody else could. Then she broke her neck like it was just another item on her to-do list."
“That’s my Luna,” Marcus said proudly.
“She was absolutely correct,” Carter agreed.
I laughed harder than I had all week as I watched my younger brother realize he was severely outnumbered.
Darius threw a hand toward me. "Don't be over there laughing, Ty. Your mate will cut a man's throat without losing a wink of sleep, then gets mad when I tell her she's not learning my faster techniques."
“Cold as ice, bro. And fine as wine.” I smiled. “I would choose her every time.”
Darius shook his head, realizing he couldn’t win this argument. “Nope, just give me a sweet quiet mate, that’s all I need.”
We all fall out laughing again.
I spent an hour longer than scheduled, but the weights and the company helped me clear my fog and stay truly present at home rather than just being there physically.
I showered in the gym locker room and took the east path back toward our quarters.
When I unlocked the front door, the first thing that hit me was the smell.
Chicken. Greens. Cornbread.
I stopped immediately.
The apartment glowed warm beneath candlelight, and there she was standing at the stove with her back to me like she’d been expecting me home.
She had cooked.
Something that had been pulled tight in my chest for weeks had come loose at the sight of it.
Not all the way. Not yet. But the direction had shifted, and I could feel it — the distinct sensation of a crack that has been slowly working on you, beginning to close rather than open.